» Travelhttp://www.thellanas.com/blog
Tue, 02 Jul 2013 17:52:35 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.22011 Vega Family Reunionhttp://www.thellanas.com/blog/2011/01/11/vega-2011-reunion
http://www.thellanas.com/blog/2011/01/11/vega-2011-reunion#commentsWed, 12 Jan 2011 01:39:17 +0000Victorhttp://www.thellanas.com/blog/?p=1293I added a special page for those interested in the 2011 Reunion of the Vega Clan. Find the link on top of the page or go here:

This is the 2nd day of our stay in the Anza Borrego Desert. Today we drove out of Coyote Canyon, attempted to find “The Slot” and ended up taking the wrong turn and Vic#2′s trusty suby just couldn’t make it up the steep, dirt road.

Photo doesn’t give this hill justice. It was steep with huge dips and very loose dirt. Unfortunately, the suby just couldn’t conquer this hill.

We ended up just leaving the car at the bottom of the hill and hiked in to find “The Slot”. Once we got to the top of the hill, we were greeted by insane winds. Strong enough to hold you up while leaning against it.

Vic#2 and Fredrik leaning against the wind.

The wind was really kicking our butts and we decided to skip this part of the trip and to use the rest of our time finding a spot for us to camp out for the night and to explore Fish Creek.

Driving into Fish Creek

Entering the Split Mountain area/Fish Creek

Vic#2 fixing the stabilizer bar that came loose from all the off-roading.

Meanwhile, as Vic#2 is trying to fix his suspension…you can’t really ignore all the things to see around the area…

After agreeing on a safe spot to camp, we only had a couple of hours of sunlight left to explore the area and hiked our way up into the wind caves.

James & Fredrik at the Wind Caves trailhead.

View of the Elephant Knees right before getting to the Wind Caves.

Wind Caves with the elephant knees in the background

I’m glad we skipped the first “hike” of the day because we probably would’ve missed the sunset from this spot…

]]>http://www.thellanas.com/blog/2010/05/09/fish-creek-anza-borrego-desert/feed0Cold Weekendin Yosemite Pt.2http://www.thellanas.com/blog/2010/05/03/cold-weekendin-yosemite-pt-2
http://www.thellanas.com/blog/2010/05/03/cold-weekendin-yosemite-pt-2#commentsMon, 03 May 2010 22:53:42 +0000Victorhttp://www.thellanas.com/blog/?p=279First glimpse of the park as you approach from the West entrance.

It’s been almost a month since I posted the first blog about the Yosemite weekend. This post will go over the remainder of that weekend.

The original plan for this trip was to drive into the park Friday night, wake up early Saturday morning, backpack and and spend the night in Little Yosemite Valley, hike out, and go home Sunday. With the stormy weather this just wasn’t the easiest thing to do. Going to the visitor center should always be one of the first stops when entering the park to get current trail conditions and get the latest information from the park officials. Due to the recent storm, the Mist Trail has been closed due to dangerous conditions, but part of the John Muir Trail is open, although the higher sections of the trail had lots of ice and snow along the trail making bits of the hike quite difficult and very dangerous. With this information, we decided not to backpack to Yosemite Valley but instead find a spot in Camp 4, and go on the original route as a day hike instead.

The group having lunch at Clark Point. We turned around from this point since the trail to the top of Vernal Falls was closed off. Plus the higher we got in elevation, the snow was just harder to hike through.

Ning & I

Ning maneuvering her way down one of the many switchbacks dangerously covered with ice.

Hiking and camping in the Coyote Canyon in Anza Borrego (wiki) just East of San Diego. We just drove down from a night of camping in freezing cold in Mt. Laguna 5000+ feet just West of Anza Borrego. Today’s plan was to drive to lower Coyote Canyon, pitch tent just before the 3rd water crossing on the trail and hike the rest of the way to an oasis in Sheep Canyon “3.5 miles away”. 3.5 miles later in 90 degree heat, the oasis looked like it was still along the horizon! The scenery was awesome, though. The desert was as colorful as ever thanks to its spring-time bloom. Flowers of all sizes and colors painted the landscape.

Getting There:

Getting to the trailhead requires a 4×4 with good clearance to go over rocks, cross streams and not get stuck in the sand.

The Hike:

The hike we were originally informed would be a round trip of 7-miles through desert heat. So we filled up our water bottles, got our sunblocks, hats, sunglasses and took off. We didn’t quite make it to the destination due to underestimating the distance. We later found out from a guide book that the distance was closer to 10 miles and not 7 miles!

Introduced Ning to Yosemite National Park and some camping experience in the cold. Other campers were my friend from work, Martin and his wife, Fannie, as well as my old camping buddy from San Diego, “Vic#2″ Chen. I started out the little road trip with some Backayard Jerk Chicken (my last good meal before I live off of freeze-dried food for the weekend) while I packed the car with all the gear while waiting for Ning from her commute from work.

We ended up leaving the bay area around 8pm to Rendezvous with Vic#2 where the 5 and the 120 freeways meet in Manteca. The poor guy took the day off to drive all day from San Diego. Vic#2 left SD just after noon and was delayed a couple of hours by LA traffic and didn’t arrive to Manteca ’til about 10pm. Ning and I were the first to arrive to Manteca and decided to kill some time at Starbucks until Vic#2 arrived. When Vic#2 arrived, we grabbed a quick dinner, loaded up his gear into my car and parked it in a residential neighborhood. He drives a Subaru Outback wagon, which blends into Manteca Suburbia perfectly. Martin and Fannie drove separately and left the Bay Area shortly after us only to turn back around because Martin left his wallet back home. Now they weren’t sure whether to continue with the plan or just drive first thing Saturday morning. They braved the night and decided to catch up with us.

It was in the 30s and raining when we arrived to Hodgdon Campsite which is, fortunately, right inside the entrance of the park. We struggled to find our campsite because…well, it was past 1 am, it was raining, there was snow on the ground, and the parking spots labeled for *our* campsite had cars parked in them. I guess it took us quite a bit of time of walking around to find the campsite cuz eventually, Martin and Fannie showed up and we still didn’t find our spot. I firmly believed people were squatting on our spot since we just couldn’t find our campsite in any of the empty spots. So with a bit of walking around other campers’ tents, I finally found our spot and there was one big tent that was taking up quite a bit of space from our spot.

Now that we found our spot, it was on to the next challenge! If you’re not a patient person, I don’t recommend you setting up a tent after a long drive at 2 am, in the freezing rain, and on snow-covered ground. I’ve set up my tent many many times and I can probably put it together with my eyes closed. Vic#2 rented a tent from REI, and Martin borrowed a tent from a coworker so NONE of us had any idea how these tents are set-up. I know I should be feeling bad for our neighbors for all the noise we were making snapping the poles together and all the rustling from moving the tents around (and of course the cussing), but it’s their own damn fault for squatting on our site anyway. When we finally got our tents up, I opened up my pack of Blue Moon and the dudes celebrated our success with a bottle of beer each and quickly called it a night. Tomorrow’s gonna be a long day

]]>http://www.thellanas.com/blog/2010/04/06/cold-weekend-in-yosemite/feed0Our Island Hopping Trip Part 1http://www.thellanas.com/blog/2008/10/04/our-island-hopping-trip-part-1
http://www.thellanas.com/blog/2008/10/04/our-island-hopping-trip-part-1#commentsSat, 04 Oct 2008 08:01:24 +0000Cynthiahttp://www.thellanas.com/blog/?p=25Just came back from our “island hopping” trip, consisting of Palawan, Bohol, Camiguin. Backpack lang kami ni Romy, as we did a lot of transfers between islands. We saw a little bit of Cebu too , as it is our connection point for Palawan and Bohol. We have Hilton Honors points so we were able to stay at the HIlton in Cebu for two nights. It would have cost us 7,000.00 pesos per night with out the points. We actually braved Typhoon Nina as we crossed Bohol Strait with giant waves.

We left on the 16th, arrive in Cebu at noon, checked in at HIlton, deposited our bags and rode the Hotel shuttle to downtown. Baba lang kami sa SM, were starved didn’t have lunch yet and it was 2:00 pm!. We saw a buffet merienda offered by Barrio Fiesta – for 110.00 pesos, they served arroz caldo, pansit lomi, dinuguan, pansit palabok, puto, puto bungbung, palitaw. We were happy about our bargain lunch. We walked around afterwards, comparing the place with SM Davao. Cebu’s is better. They have stores not in Davao, like Aldo’s, one of my favorite store in Los Angeles.We caught the hotel shuttle again at 6 pm. Beer at the hotel lobby with entertainment was 120.00 pesos each, so Romy opted to drink the beer in the bar of our room at 60.00 each. We bought some apples and bread for our late dinner at the hotel as dinner at Hilton is 1,200 per head at their buffet. Am sure the food is good, but we refuse to spend and eat that much for dinner!

Early morning the following day, we still had time to explore as our flight to Palawan won’t be until 5:00 pm. We went to the Shangrila Hotel – soooo beautiful! soooooo expensive! We also went to the Lapu Lapu Shrine – the place where he killed Magellan. All this, a walking distance from HIlton. We ate lunch at a nearby restaurant that cooks the fresh seafood you choose from their display. We picked one whole maya-maya, the head part for sinigang and grilled the rest. The price was ok.

At the Cebu airport, daming mabiling pagkain, as in Otap, chicharon, calamares. Lahat naubos namin during the duration of the island hopping. I befriended a nun who was travelling alone, named Sr. Erlinda. She is from Davao too but assigned in Palawan. She gave us a lot of advice re places to see. When we arrived in Palawan, she took us to our hotel. We just walked in and luckily they have room for us at 780.00 per night, with aircon. It is close to Kalui Restaurant, Palawan’s best. Another good restaurant thats also next door is the Kinabutz. We immediately explored downtown, but not much to see. We saw their cathedral and went in. We prayed and thank the Lord for our safe arrival. OUr flight was kinda bumpy. the winds quite strong. It started to rain so we hurried back to the hotel. We had our dinner at Kalui, which incidentally reseved for us by the hotel staff. Yup, Kalui is too popular that it requires reservation.

Our first tour was the Underground River. The hotel made the arrangement for us. For 1,500. each, we get picked up at the hotel by a van at 7 am, take us to the 2 hour drive to St. Paul Island, take the boat to the opening of the cave, ride a smaller boat for the actual tour, then back to the main island to the cottages along the beach where they served buffet lunch consisting of pork bbq, kangkong, grilled fish, chicken adobo. For soup they served the—— chicken soup made from coconut juice with grated coconut meat. Interesting and tasty! They served one whole coco. Some German tourist were very excited being their first time to have coco drink direct from the nut! After lunch, we were given time to relax, some napped, while others swam. The two hour trip back was quiet as everybody was tired. We arrived at the hotel and had dinner there. We also needed to decide where to go the following day: El NIdo perhaps? But its been raining and hotel staff adviced us against it. We decided to do local island hopping and a day tour at Dos Palmas. Someday in the future, we can access El Nido via Manila.

The tour to the underground river was about 3 miles long and 45 minutes long.The guide used flashlights to highlight scenes.

After the tour, we rode the boat again to go back to the main island. Lunch

So the second day we did 3-island hopping namely Pandan Island, Snake Island and Starfish Island. Again, for 1,100 per head, we were picked up by a van, took us to the pier. Our first stop was the Pandan Island, about 45 minutes boat ride from the main Island. This island I will ranked 3rd for my best snorkling experience in this trip. Smaller fishes, but plenty and colorful, and beautifu corrals. The rest of the people that came in our group tour were at first content with taking pictures and posing! I enticed them to snorkel and see the underwater world of Palawan. Duh!

Lovely swim! This was taken at Pandan Island. Great snorkling experience!

The second island, the Snake Island, about 30 minutes ride from Pandan Island, as named because of its shape. We snorkled the clean, and very clear waters again, and saw bigger fishes that are super-people-friendly! They follow you around when you feed them with bread! They are not afraid to get close to you to get their bite of bread! My first time ever! Snorkeled a lot here as I was enjoying the sight of the fishes! We were served lunch here. there were vendors selling live crabs for 200.00 per kilo. They will steam it for us. We bought some, ate a little bit as there were a lot of food served , so we brought the rest of the crabs to our hotel for dinner.

Snake Island Shore. Colorful fishes swimming very close to the shore. The fishes are very people friendly -specially if you have bread! Called Snake Island - not because there's plenty of snakes but because the island's shape is like that of a big snake.

The 3rd island was dissapointing, and although the island has plenty of shells and starfish, there wasn’t much to do, not much fishes to watch or feed and corrals to see.

OUr boatman tipped us that the best corrals in the area is in Pambato Reef which is along our way back. I asked our tour guide to take us there. Good thing she agreed, but we have to pay the entrance fees. And so, there at Pambato Reef I found my best snorkeling experience ever. The best marine life I’ve seen. The fishes and ohhhh, the corrals in different shapes, colors and size! So overwhelmingly beautiful!

Our 4th day was the day tour for Dos Palmas. For 1,800 per head. A tourist bus waits downtown to take us to the pier for about an hour ride to the island. Upon arrival you’re welcomed by singers while the fishes are being fed so you can see colorful fishes scrambling for the bread. It was a wonderful sight. As you go up the landing, you see the beautiful bay huts that cost a lot of money per night per head, depending on the season. Peak season vs slow season. We walked around to see the manicured and landscaped lawns, lushy gardens, colorfol flowers. With native ambience, an entire island owned by Dos Palmas. For the price, you have buffet lunch, bottomless coffee and tea, all water craft except diving. We were very excited abou the snorkling as we heard about the beauty of Helen’s Corral Garden in the Island. the speed boat took us to the launching area and jumped! The Helen’s Corral Garden is my second best. The Dos Palmas staff claims theirs is better than Pambato reef but I don’t agree. We spend the entire day enjoying the island. It is very surprising to learn that Dos Palmas uses solar power for water heating, grows their own veggies, hog farm, their own desalinazation plant so they can use sea water, waste management and recycling program. Am very impressed! They’ve created a sustainable community all its own!

Day 4 -Honda Bay Launching Area. This is where we catch the boat for our Dos Palmas day tour at 1,800.00 per head.